Lindsay Lohan: 'I want my career back'

'I know that I'm a damn good actress,' she says

"I want my career back," Lindsay Lohan told Vanity Fair in an interview conducted last month shortly before she began to serve her jail term. "I know that I'm a damn good actress, and it's been my passion since I was a child, and I know that when I care about something, I put 100% and more into it."

In the interview for the magazine that hits newsstands this week, she also discusses her youth, her absent father and her poor choice of role models.

Calling her youthful search for role models "scary and sad," Lohan said she used to mainly read tabloids and "look up to those girls...the Britneys [Spears] and whatever." She added: "And I would be like, I want to be like that."

Another problem Lohan said she now realizes she had: "I didn't have any structure...I think a lot of it was because when I was doing my first slew of movies, it was very go-go, and I had a lot of responsibility, and I think just the second I didn't have [structure] anymore -- I was 18, 19 -- with a ton of money."

Asked about drug use, Lohan told the magazine: "I've never abused prescription drugs. I never have -- never in my life. I have no desire to."

She did, however, admit to "dabbling in certain things and trying things 'cause I was young and curious and thought it was like, okay, 'cause other people were doing it and other people put it in front of me. And I see what happened in my life because of it."

Lohan also lashed out against her father for not having been there for his family. "I think if anyone should be looked at medically it's him," she said. "He has such a big chemical imbalance at this point because of all the things he's done to himself."